80 Degrees in December

Rob, Adrian and I flew to Orlando on Sunday. The journey was OK - trans-Atlantic flights are never exactly pleasurable, I could live without them - but as long hauls go this one wasn't too bad at all. We rented a car to get us from Orlando to Melbourne. Mark, a colleague, had flown into Orlando from Boston, arriving a few minutes before we did, and he very kindly agreed to drive - I wasn't looking forward to driving an automatic car on the wrong side of the road having just got off a 10-hour flight.

We got to the hotel around 18:15 and stayed just long enough to freshen up before going back out for something to eat. We went to Carrabba's, an Italian place, which was very nice, but the non-Americans at the table totally forgot about US portion sizes. We ended up with enough food to feed 10 of us, not 5... and it only cost £12 each, including tip.

As is customary for me after a long-haul flight going west, I only managed to sleep until 04:30 yesterday morning. Rob woke up at 05:00, and we caught up on e-mails and looked at Google maps for a while, working out where we were in relation to the office, Ben's house, Keith's house etc, and mapping out this running route, which we ran with Adrian at 07:00 to blow away the jet lag cobwebs. Actually, Rob ran the route with Adrian; at about 7 minutes, I told them they didn't have to run slowly on my account and they immediately sprinted away from me :). I still had them in my sights for a while, as the roads were pretty straight, but after about 19 minutes I lost sight of them altogether and didn't see them again till the end.

After the guys had left to go to the Melbourne office for their meeting, I practised driving the car round the hotel car park for a couple of minutes - it didn't take long to get used to the car; now I just have to remember to drive on the right - then drove round to Keith and Keri's house and hung out with Keri, Annabelle, Corgan, Erwin, Bieke and Jill, running errands for the party Keri had organised for everyone yesterday evening. Her friend Justin came round to do the cooking and all the guys (and girl) came round after their meeting at the office; about 30 people altogether.

I felt the first signs of a sore throat yesterday afternoon and by the time we got back to the hotel last night I was definitely getting worse, so I went out to Wal-mart across the road and got some throat sweets and have been dosing myself up on them ever since. I don't feel ill in any other way; I think it's just the combination of 10 hours on a flight with recycled air, then the air conditioning drying my throat out, and I didn't drink nearly enough in the first 24 hours after I got here. Rob, on the other hand, expected it: I am on holiday, after all, and I do tend to get sick just before or during a trip away... Hopefully it won't develop into anything else.